Cultural centre reopens with a bang

AFTER a closure of more than a month, the Western Plains Cultural Centre (WPCC) has reopened its doors and is set to wow the public with a series of fresh new exhibits.

Manager Andrew Glassop said the closure had been the longest since the WPCC opened seven years ago.

He said it was great to have people wandering back into the building again.

Six new exhibitions are being hung with four of those opening Saturday, March 2, with the remaining two on display the following Saturday.

The museum will continue to feature People, Places, Possessions: Dubbo Stories, giving visitors to the centre a total of seven exhibitions to explore from next weekend.

Mr Glassop said the exhibitions would appeal to a variety of tastes and would include prints from the top end.

"We will have prints by two artists from the Torres Strait Islands region as well as regional artist Ida Jaros who does unusually large family portraits," he said.

Mr Glassop said the artist's family went on a holiday from Hungary and she discovered the holiday was an emigration the family didn't tell anyone about.

"They just told their friends they were going on a holiday and never came back," he said.

"So it's some beautiful work about loss of connection and being in a new land, it's really interesting."

Work by Nicola Dickson: Birds from a New World, explores illustrations done George Raper, a midshipman on the First Fleet who depicted Australian native fauna, in particular birds.

"These works were discovered not that long ago, one of those musty finds in the attic, and she's taken those and redone and reimagined them by adding in the tools of imperialism - the scientific and technology and so on."

The Force - 150 Years of NSW Police will also open Saturday, which is a continuation and tribute to the anniversary of policing in NSW since 1862, when the NSW police force was officially formed.

The Outlook Cafe has also reopened and will be open from 9am to 5pm both Saturday and Sunday.

Mr Glassop encourages the community to take some time to check out the various exhibits.